


Natural

by cupidmarwani



Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Abuse, Alpha!Ava, Alpha!Will, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Jealousy, M/M, Manipulation, Omega!Connor, Sexual Harassment, Suggestive Themes, a/b/o au, endgame rhodestead, heat - Freeform, tender homoeroticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-05-28 14:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19396027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupidmarwani/pseuds/cupidmarwani
Summary: When Ava commands Connor during a surgery, she realizes what a good Omega he could be. Only, it's the last thing Connor actually wants.Updates Daily





	1. Chapter 1

It’s not that Connor is necessarily a bad surgeon, because he isn’t. He knows what he’s doing most of the time, and he’s good with his patients, but he shouldn’t be a surgeon, be a doctor in the first place, and that’s what irritates Ava the most. He’s an Omega, and she can smell that he’s fertile, sweet, naturally nurturing, and he should be at home. Cooking and cleaning. Keeping the house nice for his mate. And, given his age, he should already have children, maybe old enough to be in middle school, high school, or older by now. Instead, he’s standing across from Ava up to his wrists in a patient, arguing with her about every little detail like he has the authority to. She’s Dr. Latham’s first choice, she’s the Alpha, she’s the one in charge and he shouldn’t be acting like he knows better. He may be good at surgery, but at the end of the day, he’s an Omega. 

“I just think-”

“Connor,” she snaps. His eyes go wide and his whole body tenses. “You will shut your mouth and do as I say, understand?”

“Dr. Bekker!”

Ava looks to Latham and nods in acknowledgement, knows she’ll get an earful for using command later, but what matters now is that Connor isn’t arguing with her. Instead, he seems almost stricken, like a deer in the headlights. Or maybe a doe is a better comparison. There’s a softness to him, an innocence almost. It hits her then, that she might be able to change him if she’s patient. Get Connor to fall into his role as an Omega, stop being so combative and bratty. She commanded him once, and it’s like a switch has been flipped. She has reading to do now, research, and before she knows it she might be able to actually get him to resign.

It occurs to her all of a sudden that Connor would make a good mate if she could just get him to realize the natural order of things. He’s smart, and she can practically taste that he’s fertile, and what a thing it would be to come home and see Connor finishing up a meal for her. Smiling at her. And eventually, with a kit balanced on his hip or clinging to his legs. She wants that. Every single Omega she’s met hasn’t been good enough, but Connor would be perfect if she could just get him out of work.

He’s close to demure now, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, doing as is expected of him without arguing, and when he reaches time to stitch up, instead of asking for thread, he looks to Ava. She gets to make the call. And she does, closes up the patient, and then they’re finished, and Connor is still standing there like a lost child unsure what to do with himself. 

“Connor,” she says softly, reaching for him, checking to see if he’ll flinch away or not. “The surgery is over. The patient is okay. We did a good job.”

He nods.

The command must still be in effect if he’s not talking. Right. She told him to do as she says and be quiet, and that’s what he’s doing, like a good Omega. She has half a mind to kiss him over it, but instead she just cups his cheek gently. Although he doesn’t lean away, he doesn’t lean into it.

“It’s alright, you can speak now,” she says, effectively lifting the command.

He immediately backs away from her and leaves the OR, a faint scent of distress trailing after him that Ava only picks up on because she spends so much time around him. Usually he keeps good control of his scent. She very much would like to follow him, see where he winds up, but before she can, Latham is right beside her.

“Dr. Bekker, once you’ve cleaned up, I would like you to come to my office. We need to speak about what happened.”

“Of course.”

Time for a reprimand. He’ll remind her that it’s against policy to use command on hospital property, tell her not to do it again, and ask her to apologize, which means she gets an excuse to track Connor down, talk to him, get him alone. She shouldn’t before she does a little research, but she will.

She doesn’t rush, stripping off her gloves and gear, or letting her hair out of its bun because Connor had told her once that it looks prettier down. It isn’t like Latham would care, but she feels a little better knowing that she’s doing something that he would like. It’s one of the first steps in building at least a little more of a connection between them. 

Latham is already in his office, looking at something on his computer when Ava knocks as she opens the door. All she can think about is Connor. Where he might’ve gone, what he might be thinking, who he’s gone to for comfort. Eventually, he’ll come to her, not run from her. This is a first step. But first, Latham. An obstacle. 

“Dr. Bekker, you do understand we don’t allow command at this hospital, especially in delicate situations like surgery. Policy dictates that, depending on the situation, this be punishable by suspension or possibly dismissal.”

Right. That. Ava never liked that policy. “I didn’t mean to command him, I swear. It was… an instinct in the heat of the moment when I felt the patient was in danger.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t believe I deserve to be punished for commanding Dr. Rhodes.”

“Ah. Maybe we can evaluate what to do next after I’ve spoken with Dr. Rhodes, and have gotten his opinion. In the meanwhile-” Latham clicks around his screen a few times, “-he is off CT for the rest of his shift, and will be working in trauma. I’m going to ask that you leave him be, barring an emergency, but that the next time you two do interact, please apologize.”

“Of course.”

He dismisses her, then, and Ava goes straight to the doctor’s lounge to pull up her phone and look for articles. Her first bet is anything for dealing with traumatized Omegas. If she had to describe Connor in one word, it might be that one. Improperly cared for by his father, feeling abandoned for years, constantly trying to prove himself while having no intimate personal connections. In all reality, he needs her, because he can’t be taking care of himself if there’s no one to hold him when he’s distressed, to stroke his scent glands when he’s having a bad day, to kiss him when he cries. 

Everything she looks at tells her to give Connor space, let him move at his own pace, but that’s not going to work. She’s let him do whatever he wants for months, and it’s done nothing. He needs her to do the work for him to make sure he’s alright. But that means more in depth research than a phone search, so she’ll have to go in depth on her computer after her shift.

For now, though, she has about ten minutes to kill before she’ll have to get started on her report in the patient’s chart. Connor is in the ED, and giving him space isn’t going to fix anything. Latham doesn’t have to know, she tells herself, and starts toward the elevator. 


	2. Chapter 2

Will smells him before he sees him. He always can. While he’s not very sensitive, certainly not as much as an Omega, there’s something about Connor that he always picks up on. Sharp, but sweet. A bit like the energy drinks Will drank in med school even though he knew how bad it was for his heart. The second he catches it, he’s searching for Connor, having to take a moment to register he’s doing so. 

He catches him coming off the elevator, and knows something is wrong. His scent is just a little too sour, and he has his arms crossed in front of his chest instead of loose at his sides as he talks to Maggie. Then she’s pointing off in the direction of a treatment room, and Connor goes with his head bowed slightly more than usual. It’s instinct that carries Will towards him, wanting to fix whatever’s upset him, but Maggie stops him before he gets far. 

“I need to-”

“Leave him alone, is what you need to do,” she interrupts. “He’s alright, and you going and doing your whole ‘alpha’ thing is not gonna help anyone. Focus on your own patients.”

The truth is, she’s probably right. Connor’s never liked being talked down to, being handled with kid gloves, and no matter what, Will’s concern might fall through, and that could make things worse. He knows, better than anyone, what could happen if he and Connor get in a bad argument on what’s clearly already a bad day for him. 

So he does his job, cares for his patients, and when there’s a dull moment some twenty minutes later, he and Connor wind up both in the nurse station, Will drinking water and Connor looking through the past medical records of his patient. For a moment, Will just looks at him. The curve of his back as he leans down to look, the way he leans more on his left leg and keeps his right bent, the bright light reflecting on his eyes. Beautiful. That’s the only word to describe him.

The elevator pings, and Connor looks up before Will does. Then, in a heartbeat, his hand is on Will’s back and Connor’s pushing him toward a treatment room where a patient is currently sleeping while they wait for the results of their last round of panels and scans. As soon as they stop walking, Connor grabs a fistful of his coat, holds close enough for his scent to be borderline overwhelming. It’s good. Intoxicating. Every instinct in Will’s body is screaming at him to do something. Kiss him, mark him, croon, do something or anything to get more of that scent and fix whatever’s upsetting him.

“Connor, what’s going on?”

Connor’s cheek dimples in. He’s chewing on it again, the way he does when he’s nervous or unsure, and Will has the urge to tell him to stop. “I don’t want her near me right now.”

“Who?” Glancing out into the main area, Will scans for anyone who wasn’t there before Connor pulled him away, and his eyes land on Bekker, leaning against the counter and chatting with Monique. “Dr. Bekker? Did- did she do something to you?”

He won’t answer, but he does pull on Will’s coat a little to bring him closer. Will can’t help wrapping an arm around him, and his body is warm, solid. Holding him, it feels like the most natural thing in the world, and the thing is, he doesn’t want to let Connor go. Not now. Not ever. He can’t help rubbing his back a little too, and burying his face in soft dark hair that smells like hibiscus shampoo. 

“Whatever happened, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Connor jumps back. Rips Will’s hand off him. Drops his coat. “You’ve ‘got me?’ I’m not an object, nor am I your patient.”

“I didn’t mean it that way-”

“Doesn’t matter. Just…” Connor looks back out of the room. Will does too, and Bekker is still standing there talking to Monique, but he swears, for a moment she locks eyes with him. “Stay here with me until she goes away.”

And Will has to ask. “On the condition you tell me what happened.”

Hesitation rolls off Connor in waves, travels down his spine and bites into his scent. He doesn’t want to say it, and maybe Will shouldn’t hold safety over his head to make him, but it’ll help so much just to know. And he must admit, it’ll stroke his ego to get to feel even more like a protector, part of that desire to be the Alpha his father always said he couldn’t.

“She commanded me during a surgery.”

It’s disturbingly easy to imagine. The heavy cadence of her words dipping lower, Connor being forced to do whatever she said. He must’ve been so scared, so upset. No wonder he wants away from her. Independence is important to Connor in a way Will sometimes thinks he understands, but realizes in rational moments that he can never truly know the way it feels to have his own free will ripped from him in a moment’s notice.

So of course Will nods and pulls Connor close again, holds him and wants more than anything to brush his lips along Connor’s jaw, brush against the scent glands, make him smell claimed and protected so maybe Ava will back off. He won’t, though. That’s not what Connor wants or needs. 

“Are you afraid of her?”

He doesn’t get an answer, but Connor doesn’t pull away, and that’s something. He allows himself to be held, and doesn’t say or do anything to indicate he’d like it all to stop. His body is so warm, so real, so perfect. A thought wonders in Will’s mind of holding Connor in bed like this.

After a few minutes, Bekker gives up and leaves the ED, meaning they’re done here. Will says as much, but it still takes a long moment for Connor to actually pull away and look up with something strange in his eyes. Slowly, he tilts his head to the side, baring his neck in an undoubtedly submissive gesture, and looks up with his lips slightly parted. It’s the sort of thing that Will has dreamed about for a long time and, faced with it, isn’t entirely sure what to do.

“Connor?”

“I’m thinking it’ll make her back off, at least for now. So, please.”

And he’d do anything Connor asks, especially when he says please in that almost breathless tone. Will bows his head, gives himself a brief moment just to kiss at the area before angling his own head to the side. Rubs his face against Connor’s neck and throat, coats him in his own scent in a way that has a primal part of Will so fucking happy he can barely stand it. His. His Omega. Connor feels safe with him. Then he does the other side, and when he pulls away, he can practically taste Connor’s scent on his tongue. A neat little side effect- they both smell like each other now. Like there’s something real and good between the two of them. More than anything, Will wants that. But if this is the closest he’ll get, he’ll take it. 

“Back to work, then,” Connor says.

There’s weight in his voice, but Will might be imagining it. He nods, and the two of them exit the treatment room. It’s impossible not to watch the way he moves, the way he laughs. His scent is clinging to Will’s own throat and hands, mollifying his leftover frustration at Ava.

All the same, an hour later of glancing at Connor and concentrating on his smell, Goodwin approaches with her face set and a sour tinge to her usually soothing, almost herbal scent. “Dr. Halstead, you need to come with me right now.”

His has to be about Connor and Ava. It’s technically frowned upon for Will to have marked him like that at work, and it would be obvious to anyone that he did, but it’s not against the rules, hasn’t affected patient care, and was absolutely to protect him. If he explains that, there shouldn’t be any issues. All of it’s going through his head so quickly that he doesn’t come back down to reality until he’s standing across from Goodwin at her desk.

“I received a complaint that you were behaving inappropriately with Dr. Rhodes.”

His chest aches. He can still smell Connor all over him. “I… what? He asked me if I would mark him, said it would make him feel safer today-”

“The complaint,” Goodwin says, looking at her tablet, “is that he pushed you away, that his agitation could be smelled across the room, and then the curtains got drawn, and a few minutes later he had been marked. Will, I want to believe that you wouldn’t do anything untoward, but I have to take this seriously. Tell me your side of what happened.”


	3. Chapter 3

Ava’s skin is burning, itching, just watching this happen out of the corner of her eye. Halstead’s hands all over Connor, taking advantage of how soft and sweet he is because Ava made him that way, because she knows what he needs. Connor is hers. Her Omega. Her little pet project. Halstead has no right to touch him, and seeing it makes her hands twitch at her sides and her instincts roar to fight, to make Halstead submit to her and apologize for daring to touch what’s hers.

On some level, she knows she’s gotten too attached to the idea of having Connor too fast. The thought only just occurred to her today. But maybe she’s thought about this for a while, just not on a conscious level. The image of Connor in her kitchen, smiling and doing his duties as her mate, comes back to her all over again. It’s an outdated idea, but she suddenly remembers something her grandfather had said about his own mate. Barefoot and pregnant, like Omegas should be. Maybe it’s not entirely what she wants, but it’s the idea behind it, the real understanding of where Connor should be and what he should be doing. 

When Connor pushes Halstead away, and she can smell that he’s upset, suddenly not as submissive like he had been earlier, something like pride. He knows that he doesn’t belong to Halstead, and on some level, he knows that Ava is the Alpha he should answer to. The way he reacted to her command, it was so beautiful, so right. Connor is beautiful, she thinks. He’s proportioned perfectly, hard angles and soft edges in the right places. If she ever has kits with him, they’ll be so gorgeous and smart. They’ll be perfect.

But then Halstead is touching him again, and he’s at Connor’s throat, and she knows he’s marking him. Laying a claim on what isn’t his. Ava has a vivid thought, for just a second, of grabbing Will by the throat and slamming his head into the wall until he can’t even look at Connor anymore, let alone manage to lift a hand towards him.

“Dr. Bekker, are you okay?”

Right. She was listening to the young nurse who keeps making goo-goo eyes at Halstead. Maybe she’d do some good for him, get him to focus on an Omega that doesn’t belong to someone else.

“I have something to attend to,” Ava says, and turns on her heel. She can file a complaint anonymously about Halstead, about how he dared to pretend that he’s anyone worth Connor’s time. Of course Connor didn’t want that. Halfway down the hall, she’s already on her phone, pulling up the complaint form on the hospital website. She knows exactly how to fill one out, make sure it’s seen and addressed right away, get Halstead as far away from Connor as possible, even if she can’t pull Connor from the emergency department right now.

It only takes a couple of minutes. By the time she’s back where she should be for her rounds, the report has been sent in, and soon they’ll be pulling Halstead away and ensuring he won’t be anywhere near Connor anymore. Trying to take him away. He has no right, absolutely no right to go near what’s hers.

By the time she gets back to her rounds, nurses are giving her a wide berth because they spend enough time around her to tell she’s angry, and that just pisses her off more. She’s not an Omega. She’s not  _ Connor _ . She should be able to control herself. Ava takes a slow deep breath, forces herself to control her scent, and heads in to see the first of her patients. 

Her shift goes slow, but quickly at the same time. She performs more surgeries. She checks on her patients. She does her job. And when she’s released for the time being, she goes down to the ED where Connor is standing in the doctor’s lounge, pressing his nose into the collar of his jacket with his eyes shut. When Ava steps a little closer, she can smell the cologne on the fabric and its combination with the scent of the owner. Halstead’s jacket. More than anything, she wants to rip it off him. Instead, she raps her fist against the door frame.

“Connor?”

He jumps, rips his face away from the collar like he knows he shouldn’t be doing that. He knows he doesn’t belong to Halstead, whatever that doctor would like to think, and he recognizes who he should really be looking to. His head tips back, just a little. She’s never seen him do that to her. Be submissive to her. It makes her entire body hum.

“I am really, genuinely sorry about what happened, Connor. It was a high stress moment, we were in the middle of a surgery- I didn’t mean to. You understand, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says, but he leans back on one foot and averts his eyes. Once again, he’s deferring to her, avoiding challenging her. But he’s nervous about it, and she needs to be careful here because he isn’t entirely ready yet to admit that he needs her to take care of him. “Is that all, or…”

Ava can’t help herself. She’s not ready to abandon him yet today. “I’d like to buy you a drink as an apology. Just the one.”

For too long, his eyes flit between her lips and his own hands, but he finally nods and, after a moment’s hesitation, shrugs out of Halstead’s jacket to leave it on the couch in the lounge. Then he comes closer and falls into an easy step behind her, his hips swaying slightly with each step, but not in an exaggerated way designed to get attention. He knows his body is enough on its own. 

She can’t wrap an arm around his waist all the way, but she does place a hand on his lower back, just between his hips as they walk out together. His body is warm, and the close contact forged by her touch lets her smell him better. If she concentrates, really concentrates, she can tell that he’s probably approaching a heat. He hasn’t had one since she got here, a long time even on suppressants, so it makes sense it would be close, and the scent works its way through her body like a slow pull of heroin in her blood. Her fingertips are burning. How badly would he take it so soon, she wonders, if she dug her thumbs into the tender space on the inside of his hip bones to see how slick it makes him. It would smell good, taste better. But this early, this soon, she has to admit that he would likely react poorly.

He has a sports car, she knows, even though Ava takes the train. It’s easy to spot, and she holds out her hands for his keys when he shoves his hand into his pocket to find them. Connor pauses again.

“I’ll drive. You’re tired, and I want to make up for earlier. Please.”

Before he decides, she plucks the keys from his hand and goes over to the car, sliding herself into the front seat and adjusting it for her shorter legs. The leather is supple, comfortable. A little cold. She flicks the seat warmer on, and does the same for the passenger seat as Connor buckles himself in. When the heat comes on, she angles all the vents toward him, because it’s her job to take care of him, and he’s an Omega. He gets cold easier than she does. 

The radio station is almost soft, something she didn’t expect from someone as often outspoken as him. It plays to what he should be, not what he is, and that gives Ava a flicker of confidence that this may be easier than she thought. As she drives them, further than the usual Med bar, Molly’s, she keeps glancing over at Connor. His lips seem soft. Maybe tonight, if she’s lucky, she’ll be afforded the chance to feel them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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“No. No, I’m telling you, there’s been a mistake. Connor asked me to mark him. I would never, ever do anything to an Omega I wasn’t explicitly asked to, Mrs. Goodwin, you know that,” Will pleads. “Whoever reported this, they lied. I swear, you can even ask him yourself. That isn’t what happened-”

She holds up a hand for him to silence himself. 

All Will can think about is why someone would say that, why someone would think he would ever hurt Connor. That’s the last thing he’d ever intend to do, especially when Connor had come to him seeking comfort and safety. Right now, he should be in the ED, taking care of patients and keeping an eye across the room on his coworker, but instead he’s here, wondering if he’s going to be suspended over something he didn’t even do. And Will’s the type of Alpha who believes victims, honestly. But he knows Connor didn’t report this, and that he didn’t do anything wrong.

“I believe you, and not this report. But it is protocol that I investigate. So tell me what happened, and then I’ll interview Dr. Rhodes myself. If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. So just sit down and talk to me.”

Will forces himself into a seat, schools his voice as calm as he can manage, and goes through the whole thing from the beginning. Connor coming into the ED and acting strangely, and then how he pulled Will aside for comfort, and asked to be marked. He tells her that Ava had commanded Connor- which she responds to by emailing Dr. Latham- and all he did was try to protect someone he cares about. And he explains how Connor pushed him away at first too, but only because he was already on edge, and that he came right back and then asked to be protected. Will just wants him to be safe. 

“Okay. You can wait outside while I talk to Dr. Rhodes.”

He gets out of the chair faster than he could have ever thought, practically throws himself out of the room, and sees Connor standing just outside, leaning against the wall. Ever so slightly, he bares his throat to Will again, dosing him with his scent. It washes over in a wave of serenity, stealing his anxiety as Connor walks in to see Goodwin. They're only in there together for a few minutes before the door swings open and Will sweeps back in to the soundtrack of Connor's shoes on the floor and the slight tug of a capable hand grabbing his lab coat for the second time today. Holding. Clinging. Needing. It pokes at Will's instincts to cradle Connor close to his body and claim him. 

"Like I told you, Will, I believed you. The report is clearly a misunderstanding. But in the future, be more careful about public affection, okay?"

"Of course, Mrs. Goodwin," Will says immediately.

Connor only responds by nodding and pressing his face against Will's sleeve. Inhaling slow and deep. Smelling, using it to self-soothe, and that feels like victory. Connor wants him. When they leave her office, they’re still close together and Will can smell himself all over Connor’s body at this close range and he wonders, suddenly, what it would be like to truly lay down with him and bond with him, be given the chance to love him.

He doesn’t say as much, though maybe it’s visible on his face anyways because Connor smiles at him bright and perfect and kisses his shoulder. Something about that gives Will the courage to wrap an arm around Connor properly and keep him close. He has this urge to mark Connor again, to refresh the scent and make it glaringly obvious no matter where in the hospital one is that Connor is claimed and off limits.

But the thing is, Will doesn’t have a claim to him, and this whole thing, it’s just so Connor feels a little safer in light of Bekker having commanded him, which in of itself isn’t that much of a sign of interest. He can only have this today. He has to enjoy it before it’s gone, and takes the offer when Connor leads him into a supply closet and bares his throat again to be marked. Will doesn’t hesitate to take the chance he’s offered. He kisses along his jaw, bites gently once or twice, and then dips his head to rub his cheek against Connor’s stubble. He wants them to smell the same. Wants people to think they’re courting.

Will wants to court him.

He’d never admit it, certainly not to Connor, but he loves the idea of having the privilege to kiss him all the time, buying him dinner, taking care of him the way an Alpha should. Too many people would want Connor to quit his job to become the ideal mate, but Will doesn’t think that way. Connor would be miserable. And he deserves to be able to choose what he wants, to keep working if he wants to instead of being relegated to a human incubator that does the cooking and cleaning. That wouldn’t be Will taking care of his mate, but expecting him to be a servant. Really taking care of him would mean sometimes, Will does the cooking. It would mean cleaning up when Connor is sick or tired or just having a bad day. It would mean tucking him into bed and helping him wash his hair and marking him every morning before work and helping him cook breakfast on Sunday mornings and giving him his everything. People don’t always understand what it really means to care for an Omega. And maybe that’s the only thing Will has that could help him if he really wanted to court Connor.

“Alpha,” Connor whines, and Will jerks back, dropping his grip on Connor’s hips that he didn’t realize he had.

“Connor? Connor, hey, what-”

His nose catches it. A hint of slick. A hint of heat. Not here yet, but close, and clearly brought nearer to the surface. Will takes an instinctive step back and raises his hands like a surrender. If Connor’s close, it means he probably can’t consent to anything, and Will refuses to do anything that he isn’t one hundred percent certain Connor wants. He isn’t that kind of Alpha.

“I’m sorry. It just happens- I’ve been on suppressants for like- for like five years,” Connor says, and his voice is breathy in a way that worms beneath Will’s skin and sparks heat in his cheeks. “Haven’t had a heat since. Sometimes my body just does that, and it’s an instinct- I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry."

Will waves a hand dismissively and cups Connor’s cheek. “It’s okay. But five years, Connor…”

“My GP knows. It’s all good. But if this means you don’t wanna mark me today, I get it.”

No, that’s not an issue. It’s the furthest thing from an issue. Will shuts his eyes and inhales deeply, savors the crisp scent of Connor’s slick, even if it feels a little empty without arousal to back it and give weight to what it could mean. There’s nothing real here, Will reminds himself.

“It’s not your fault. Just maybe take a few minutes before you come back to work?”

Connor nods, and they separate a little more as they leave the closet. His scent is cloying, heavy, almost too intense where it burns in Will’s usually under-sensitive nose. Being able to smell this so strongly feels like a miracle.

“Take my jacket home,” Will says, before he can stop himself. “My shift is a couple hours longer, but this way, you’ll be good for tomorrow. If you want that, of course.”

“I’d love that.”

He lifts up on his toes just enough to kiss Will’s cheek and breaks away to go wash his hands and wipe himself down a little so he can go back to work, while Will just heads straight back to check on his patients and look at their results. In truth, his job barely touches his thoughts when he can still see and smell Connor for the majority of the day. He sees him getting ready to leave, holding Will’s jacket to his face, and feels warm inside and secure when he turns his full attention to a woman riding in on a gurney out of an ambulance. 

By the time his own shift is over and Will goes to the doctor’s lounge, he sees his jacket crumpled on the table. He picks it up like a fragment of glass, like it’ll hurt him, and lifts it to his face. It smells like Connor, but the scent is stale. Something’s wrong.

Or, his brain supplies snidely, Connor never wanted the jacket in the first place and he didn’t want to openly tell Will no. Although he doesn’t want to believe it, Will winds up cramming the jacket back into his locker before he goes home feeling empty.


	5. Chapter 5

As they walk into the bar, Ava has her hand on Connor’s back again, and she can’t wait for the opportunity to push her hand beneath his shirt, drag her nails lightly over the smooth skin there and maybe follow it with her lips just to make him squirm. He’s already shifting more than usual, reacting to being touched because he doesn’t get that often enough even though he clearly needs it. That’s something Ava can fix. She can give him the touch he needs to function well.

He sits down at the bar and starts picking at a napkin, waiting for her to order first, and the power rushes to her head. She grabs a seat beside him and orders a glass of red for herself, and a cocktail for him. Omegas like that sort of thing, the bright colors to distract them, and in truth, she’s got this urge to get him drunk. It would give her the chance to take him home, tuck him in, prove that she can take care of him exactly the way he needs.

As soon as it’s set down in front of him, Connor picks up the drink and takes a sip, squeezing his eyes shut at the taste for just long enough that she notices. Ava can’t help reaching over and rubbing his cheek briefly with the back of her hand. “A bit strong for you?”

“No, it’s perfect. Just wasn’t expecting it.”

Perfect. Perfect like the fact he enjoys the drink and she can buy him more. Perfect like the way his legs hang off the seat but interlock at the ankles with a modesty she’s come not to expect from him. Perfect like the way his fingers curl delicately around the stem of his glass in the way she’d like him to hold her wrist when she touches his face. Perfect, he’s perfect, and she studies his face as she takes a small sip of her wine. She needs to be sober to drive him home afterward. 

“When was the last time you were courted, Connor?” she asks. It’s unlikely anyone would want him with his flaws right now, be willing to put in the work like her, and he would have mentioned if he had his eye on someone. “And not just a little flirt, maybe one date. I mean seriously courted, by someone who wanted to be your mate.”

He clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair, won’t look her in the eyes. “Not since I was a kid. My dad wanted to find me a good mate, got a bunch of his friends to try and court me, but-” Connor finishes the rest of his cocktail like it’s a shot, waves at the bartender for another. She’s glad she didn’t have to push for it, but he shouldn’t be making choices like that on his own. “I just didn’t have much interest in Alphas his age. So yeah, no courting since then. Not that there haven’t been contenders, but nothing’s worked out.”

It isn’t because he’s not a good Omega. He has the potential, and she can see it, but it needs to be nurtured and cultivated. By pushing him towards disgusting Alphas who only wanted to take advantage of a practical child, Connor’s father made him into a brat who doesn’t respect authority. But deep down, he’s a good boy. Ava just happens to be the first to have the patience to search for it. 

“I’m sorry to hear that. I think, with a little bit of attention, you’d be a lovely mate.”

“Hmm.”

He doesn’t reciprocate the compliment, but she supposes it’s hard to blame him. He’s probably flustered by her words, a hunch proved by the dusting of pink on the height of his cheekbones before he disguises it in his second drink of the night. Ava thinks he’ll be tipsy at the end of this one, drunk by three and a half, maybe four, if she can keep him here until then. 

“And what about you,” he counters, “when was the last time you courted someone?”

As if he has any right to ask. Ava laughs and kicks her feet against the barstool. “Med school, probably. I don’t have much time and, to be honest, I can’t handle a lot of Omegas. They’re  _ frilly _ , immature. And so many of them, they just- they couldn’t keep up with me. You can, though.”

“Are you intending to court me, Ava?”

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “I’ll be honest, I worry you don’t know your place.”

“My place.” He snorts into his drink and Ava gets this thought of backhanding him so hard he falls out of his chair for daring to speak to her that way when he’s beneath her. And she hates that he’s acting dumb now, when he clearly has the instinct to submit to her. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not, I swear. Connor- do you know what you smell like?”

A ghost of a smile tugs at his lips, and for a moment she thinks it’s good, but then he speaks. “Will told me I smell like orange flavored Monster tastes.”

“No!” 

At her harsh tone, his shoulders curl inward and he instinctively bares his neck to her, chest heaving just a little bit. She leans toward him enough to wrap a hand around the side of his neck, graze her thumb against one of his scent glands, get him to calm down a little even though he whimpers in a way she’s never heard from him. It’s delicious. She wants to hear it again, but not in the middle of this bar.

“You smell like everything you’re supposed to,” she whispers, looking into his eyes and trying to get him to understand how perfect he is, how much she wants him. “You smell like you’re just waiting for someone to put you on your knees, like you’re made to be bred, like you’re trying so hard to be something you’re not.”

Ava had hoped her words would placate him, but instead he jerks away from her, finishes his drink quickly, and orders a third. His muscles are all tensed, and she can smell just a hint of distress to his scent. He’s trying to control it, but she knows him too well. By the time he gets his third, he’s perpetually rosy in the cheeks, rocking a little in his chair, and resolutely not looking at her because he’s not ready to understand what he deserves. 

“I should drive you home,” she muses, like she hasn’t thought about it this whole time. “I’ve barely had one glass, you’re on three.”

As she speaks, Ava pulls out her card and hands it to the bartender. She did promise to buy him a drink, and she could hardly call herself a provider if she were to leave him to fend for herself. Once her plastic is returned and she leaves a tip, Connor has just about finished his final third drink and doesn’t have the presence of mind to do anything other than allow it as Ava pulls him out of his chair and half carries him out to his car.

This time, she truly does need to buckle his seatbelt in him. He’s soft for her, now, leaning into her touch a little, because he belongs to her and in this moment he can admit it. Before she pulls away and shuts his door, she allows herself to nose along his temple. Sweat and sweetness. Natural.

For the whole drive home, Connor is quiet and mostly still, placated by booze and oblivious to all that Ava is thinking about. Taking him home, she has the opportunity to make sure he’s always thinking about his true duty of serving an Alpha. Put her scent everywhere. That thought sends shivers down her spine. Claiming his space as well as him. There’s no way she won’t take advantage of this chance. 

When they actually get to Connor’s apartment, it takes a few tries to find the right key and get inside. The whole place smells like him. She’s dizzy enough with it to have to take a moment and breathe, although that might make it worse, because it floods her all over again. 

She falls prey to her instincts, then, and pushes Connor against the wall, grabbing his wrists and holding them to the wall just in case he’s fussy at how quick this is. He doesn’t really fight her so much as whine and sag against the wall like he’s given up. Ava buries her face in his scent glands, desperate to replace what’s left of Halstead with her own scent. She licks, bites, rubs. Connor is hers. Hers. he belongs to her. And he’s doing a good job now, letting her groom him. 

“Good Omega,” she coos.

That finally breaks through his calm shell and has him weakly struggling, tugging just barely at the grip she has on him. 

“Stop it,” she commands.

He immediately relaxes again, physically, but there’s a fear in his eyes and scent that gets underneath her skin as she starts to drag him to bed. It isn’t like she’s going to do anything to him. The second they’re in his bedroom, he starts half-heartedly struggling again until she commands him to be still and strips away his outer layers for a better sleep. Ava has to shove him a little more roughly than she’d like to get him into bed, but he settles when she doesn’t follow him right away. First, she has to find something and leave her jacket where Connor won’t be able to ignore. If she’s done everything right, maybe he’ll have the presence of mind to make them breakfast come the sun peaking over the horizon and into his garishly large windows.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay? Crazy day yesterday, didn't sit down until I was at my grandma's without a computer umu

Will can tell the second Connor gets to work that something’s wrong. For starters, his distress is obvious, and so is the claim clinging to his skin like sunscreen and sand at the beach. He reeks. And the scent is so potent, so familiar, that Will can tell right away it belongs to Bekker. It’s a struggle not to physically push people out of his way to get to Connor and guide him somewhere more private before he gets crowded by well-intentioned and/or overprotective Alphas. More people like Will, his brain supplies, but he ignores it because Connor is quick to grab onto Will’s arm and hide his face. Something really bad happened. 

“Noah, cover for me,” Will calls as he takes Connor as far from the bustling emergency department as he can manage. There’s not too much privacy in a hospital, but after a few moments, he finds an empty janitorial closet like they did just yesterday after a meeting with Goodwin. At this point, Connor is borderline hyperventilating and rubbing his face and neck frantically against Will’s sleeve. “Hey, hey, breathe. What happened?”

At first, Connor doesn’t verbalize an answer, just bares his neck and whines until Will grooms him, covers Bekker’s scent with his own. He’s careful, as much as he can be, because there’s clear irritation from either the physical act of Bekker marking him or the distress from the action. Will’s gentle either way, just stroking the slightly flushed skin with his thumbs and brushing his lips wherever Connor will let him. All he does at first is wash away Bekker’s scent before marking, replacing it with his own. He’s doing this for Connor, not himself, he thinks, as Connor slowly relaxes against the wall and his distress fades from the forefront of his scent. 

“Please tell me what happened,” he asks once he pulls away. It’s a little hard to focus, so overwhelmed by Connor’s scent, but he has self control. “I just want to help.”

“Last night. She- she bought me a drink, and- I got drunk, Will, I- I couldn’t move, she touched me- my nest, her jacket- when I woke up, she was still there. She was holding me, she was in my bed-”

He’s breathing harshly again, getting distressed again, and on instinct Will wraps his arms around him and holds him close. If they were courting, if they were mates, his scent would help. It might make things worse right now. But it doesn’t, and Connor just sinks into him and nuzzles into Will’s chest. 

“I’ll protect you, I promise.”

Connor nods, and Will tries to process the fragments that did come to light. Bekker got him drunk, possibly commanded him to stay still. She touched him, which would mean when she marked him, or it could be something much worse. She did something to his nest. And after it all, she spent the night in Connor’s bed. No wonder he’s freaked out. He was stressed enough yesterday from one command, but all this- it’s a wonder Connor’s still standing on his own two feet.

“If you want to go back home, I’ll cover for you.”

That’s the point when Connor steps back, out of Will’s arms, and looks down at the floor. “No, I’ve got work to do. I have a surgery scheduled today, and- oh. Bekker’s assisting. But I can’t let that- I’ve gotta do that. And there’ll probably be more happening. I should get going.”

With that, Connor hurries out of the closet, leaving Will to stand there with remnants of his scent lingering in the thick air. Once again, he gets that hint of heat and slick, and he worries that maybe the suppressants are failing. It’s not unheard of when an Omega is put under extra stress that they go into an early and/or unexpected heat. If that’s the case, then Connor could be in some real danger of Bekker doing something that can’t be undone.

He realizes suddenly that he’s growling at the thought of Bekker pinning Connor’s shoulders down and biting him hard enough to mate, bond, keep. She’s not good enough for him. She’s an active threat to him. If he had any proof, Will would go straight to Goodwin, or even Jay, to make sure she can never hurt Connor again, but right now he doesn’t have any proof. He’d just seem like a jealous, unhealthily possessive Alpha.

All he can do is ignore the fear pounding the inside of his ribcage that something really bad is going to happen. It only gets worse when Maggie asks him whose heat scent is on his coat, and asks him to change before it upsets the patients. He doesn’t tell her the truth about it being Connor, although she may guess as much from his normal scent being all over Will, just like it was yesterday, heavy enough that Natalie asks him if they’re courting. They’re not. Will’s just trying to protect him.

That’s what he tells himself until Bekker pages him up to see her, and when he arrives, she’s fuming. Pacing back and forth, anger radiating off her. But most of all, he locks onto Connor’s scent all over her. The scent of his distress and a whiff of heat and more slick than there should be. Fuck. She did something to him. Before he can think of why she called him up here, he’s got Bekker against the wall and his teeth bared, making it clear he’s willing to tear her throat out if it comes to it.

“Back off, Halstead,” she snaps, and her command is heavy enough that even he, an Alpha, obeys. It must’ve been awful for Connor to experience something so overpowering. “You had no right to touch my Omega.”

Will rolls his shoulders back. He knows he shouldn’t, but he’s about to get into a fight. “He’s not yours.”

“I suppose you think he’s yours, then?” Bekker bites.

“No. He’s his own fucking person, and he’s not looking for an Alpha.”

She laughs at him, actually laughs at him, and lifts her arm up so he can smell Connor’s slick and heat on her sleeve. “That smell like he’s not looking for an Alpha? It’s not my fault you only took notice once I did. He’s mine, so leave him alone, and stop scenting over me.”

“He asks me to do that.”

All of a sudden, her face twists, and she slaps him hard enough to make his ears ring and his balance wobble. By the time his eyes can focus again, Will is cupping his injured cheek and staring at Bekker. That’s not how Alphas fight. Not traditional ones like Bekker seems to be. She seems to realize it too, her eyes wide and her scent surprised.

“Too scared to actually challenge me for him, Bekker?”

“You will tell  _ no one _ ,” she growls, and the command wraps itself around Will’s lungs. She shouldn’t be able to command him. “Don’t go near my Omega ever again.”

At least the second sentence doesn’t settle into his blood the same way, but now Will knows, Connor is in genuine trouble. But he still can’t say anything, because Bekker commanded him not to, and it makes him so angry. This isn’t fair to him or to Connor. Mostly to Connor.

Connor, who Will doesn’t see the rest of the day, who doesn’t answer his phone, who doesn’t come clear out his locker, who doesn’t ask him to cover Bekker’s scent up at all, is far in distance but near in mind for the rest of the day. He’s terrified that maybe, just maybe, Bekker hurt him so badly he can’t even ask for help.

But come morning, after a reckless night of worrying and calling and worrying and calling and trying to catch the remnants of Connor’s scent on his dirty clothes, he gets the fateful call back, nearly dropping his phone four times in his effort to answer before it’s too late.

“Hey, hey, are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”

“Come over. Please.”

Something about his voice makes alarm bells ring. Breathy. Hoarse. Exhausted. Will doesn’t bother putting on a real shirt again as he grabs his coat and shoves his feet into his shoes. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, will you be okay until then?”

“Alpha,” Connor whines.

Oh. Oh no.

“Connor, no. I’m not going to- I can’t do that to you. You can’t consent right now, you don’t want this-”

“Then just hold me, Alpha, please?”

Nothing too bad can come of just holding a scared, lonely, unmated Omega in heat. And Connor’s asking for him, needs him. “Okay. I will. I’ll be there soon, just breathe. Try and drink some water for me.”

He hopes to God that Bekker doesn’t know Connor’s heat has hit full force. He hopes even more that Connor didn’t accidentally call her first.


	7. Chapter 7

The thing that wakes Ava up is Connor’s distress. She wrinkles her nose and opens her eyes to see him hurrying toward the shower, struggling to really fill his lungs. “Connor,” she commands, “take deep breaths. And when you’re finished showering, make us breakfast.”

He disappears into his bathroom, leaving her to pick up her dirty scrubs and wish they were clean, but there isn’t time for her to wash them now. She should’ve thought of that last night. It’s alright, though, she has a fresh pair at work just in case that she can switch to as soon as she’s in for the day. It shouldn’t be long now, anyways.

To the tune of Connor’s shower, she stretches out on the bed and relishes in his scent until she feels more like getting up and scraping her somewhat greasy hair into a ponytail, out of her face. While he cooks, she’ll rinse off in his shower, use his toothpaste and her finger to do as much cleaning as she can without having to go home, which would honestly be a nightmare. She doesn’t want to separate from him right now, not when she’s made this much progress.

His shower is quick, mercifully, and then she gets to take one, wrap herself in the scent of his shampoo and body wash, the conditioner that seems unused but smells nice anyways. It feels almost like being claimed right back. She savors it until she’s ready to get out, dry off, redress, and all that fun stuff. By the time she opens the bathroom door, she can smell pancakes- thick enough in the air that they’ve been finished a few minutes.

“Connor?” 

A whimper answers her, one she follows to where she found his nest stashed in the walk in closet last night. She left her coat there, rolled around on the fabric to savor Connor’s scent and mix it with his own. As soon as she throws open the door, Connor startles and draws his knees to his chest, visible tears in his eyes. 

“We’ve got to eat and get to work. Out, come on.”

He nods and stands up, brushing imaginary dirt off himself before following her to the table where he’s set out two small stacks of pancakes, syrup in the middle. The dishes are still dirty, for some reason, but she’ll cut him some slack- he must be hungover. He picks at his food more than eats it, which she excuses for the same reasons, but the pancakes he made for them are delicious, borderline sweet.

She eats quickly, watches Connor the whole time and thinks about marking him before they go off. There’s no point when she did it so thoroughly the night before, but she still has the urge just because she loves touching him. Soft skin, firm, perfect to be bruised up and bitten. It would be heaven just to keep him home today and spend the hours breeding and mating him, maybe even push his heat to full bloom so she can spend days doing nothing but taking him.

But they have work to go to, and she can’t push Connor that far at this moment when she’s already done a lot to him in the past twelve hours, commanding him and grooming him and changing his nest. It’s expected he’ll need a little bit of time to adjust, and she’ll give that to him for now. But before long, she’ll get him to start behaving like a good Omega. Already, he’s not talking, being a good little Omega and waiting to be spoken to, holding his silence even as Ava drives the two of them to the hospital and drops him at the entrance to the emergency room. 

She doesn’t see him until halfway through the day, when he’s coming to do his rounds in CT, and something sets her off. He smells like Halstead again. Halstead, even though he’s hers, and she can almost taste his slick and heat on the back of her tongue, blooming and needy and Christ but Ava needs to take care of that for him. She needs to own him. She grabs him by the arm, drags him into the gender neutral bathroom and slams the door to pin him against it, just like last night. He’s squirming a little, pushing back, but he’s not strong enough to dislodge her. Or perhaps he’s not really trying because deep down, he’s starting to accept his true nature.

“You’re mine,” she growls. 

Connor doesn’t argue or agree, and she has to grab his chin and lift his face herself because he won’t bare his throat to her. She doesn’t care about making this nice for him when he keeps allowing Halstead to touch him, groom him. She bites harshly, hard enough to taste a hint of copper and make him finally, finally, bare his neck on his own in a display of true submission.

Both of her hands now free, she lets them fall to Connor’s waist and dig her thumbs into the tender space just inside his hips, the slight give there to let her know she’s pressing at exactly the right place. His reaction is instantaneous, whining and going lax against the wall, the bathroom beginning to smell heavily of his slick. It must be soaking through his underwear, getting on his scrubs. She wants to taste it. But first, she needs to see if she can really force him into heat. It would be perfect- she could truly claim him, then, and then she’d have the legal right to yank him out of this hospital and train him to be the good, submissive Omega she knows is in there.

Ava presses a little harder, rubs a little as she keeps grooming his neck, and Connor’s whimpers turn to whines. She thinks she has him. But then, right when she can smell the heat beginning to truly overtake him, he shoves her off and runs, moving too quickly for her to stop him before the shock at his actions wears off. 

She fixes her hair, takes a few deep breaths, and walks back out of the bathroom. A janitor is already cleaning the floor to cover Connor’s heat scent with that of bleach in an effort to avoid an incident. It’s heat protocol, especially with someone who smells as good and looks as perfect as Connor. But she needs to find him, quickly. If she leaves with him, she gets the time off, and she’ll be able to take him. But that means finding him before he can leave.

The first place she can think of that he’d go is the ED, but his faint scent trail doesn’t even reach the elevator. It goes to Latham’s office, and Ava has no choice but to return to her work and stew over the fact that Halstead can’t seem to stop touching what isn’t his. Connor is hers. Hers. Her clothes still smell like his slick and heat, and he wouldn’t be doing that if he didn’t want her to mate him. She can still picture it, holding him down and mating him. Giving him her kits to carry and look after. But for some reason, her brain thinks about Halstead doing that instead, touching and kissing and holding Connor, and the only way to calm the rage it builds is to imagine tearing his throat out and ripping his body to shreds. Connor is hers.


	8. Chapter 8

The door is unlocked when Will gets to Connor’s, which is dangerous as hell, but time saving because he can let himself in without a problem. He’s never been inside here before, but he can tell it had been a clean, well kept apartment at one point. But now there are blankets and pillows all over the floor, something Dr. Charles would have a field day with because it shows how unsafe Connor is feeling, how desperate he is to nest that he’s attempted to make his entire apartment into one. It breaks Will’s heart, really does, but he can’t focus on it for longer than a minute or so when the scent of heat is overwhelming him and he can hear Connor’s desperate little whimpers coming from what must be his nest.

“Connor? I’m here.”

“Alpha?”

Will follows the sound and scent to a bedroom, surprised to see Connor splayed out on the floor, crying, as opposed to in his nest or even on the bed. He’s undressed, but clearly in need of a bath, and has likely been since yesterday sometime after he ran away from Will. He smells, not only like slick and heat, but like sweat and fear and an undercurrent of Ava. It’s that last one that must be torturing him, having him scratching at his neck even though the skin is already covered in raised lines and irritated. It’s that which makes Will drop down to his knees heavily and grab his wrists to make him stop.

The second he makes contact, Connor relaxes and tips his head back, looking at Will through hooded lids. His hips raise off the floor a little, but Will ignores it because no matter what he thinks he wants, he can’t consent to it. The most Will can do is groom away Ava’s scent and hold Connor through the worst of it, which he starts at immediately. He rubs his own scent glands against Connor’s, and for a second, allows himself to indulge in how good this all smells and feels. Like for once, he’s doing something right. 

When he pulls away, Connor guides his hands down, toward his waist, and Will knows he needs to stop now. He glances down though, and what he sees chills him to the bone. Two small, but dark, bruises right along the inside of his hips, above the glands in his torso that make the slick currently soaking the sheets beneath them.

“Who did that to you?” he demands.

Connor just whines. 

“Omega. Tell me. Who did that to you?”

“Alpha,” Connor says plaintively, and lifts his arms to cling to Will. It’s weird, seeing him give in so much to his instincts, to see him in a heat and openly craving touch and love. Would he be like this more often if he felt safe? It’s near impossible to know. “Hurts.”

Yeah, it probably does. He needs ice, but the second Will pulls away to go get some, Connor yelps and grabs at him tighter, burying his face in the crook of Will’s neck. He can feel each damp breath against his skin, and then the teeth that follow because Christ, Connor is biting him, and he can’t entirely remember why he isn’t pushing Connor’s legs apart and following his instincts to claim in a way that Bekker can’t come near. It would feel so good, and Connor would truly be his.

He forces himself to pull away before he does something he can’t undo. “Connor, stop.”

Connor whines as Will detaches himself. He looks so sad. So small. 

“I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Will sprints to the kitchen and opens Connor’s freezer. It’s mostly popsicles and ice cream, but he’s able to track down a couple of sports ice packs, the soft kind full of blue gel. Leave it to Connor to have something Will would’ve killed for when he broke his arm in the fourth grade. He carries the both of the ice packs back to Connor, who’s started rubbing his face against where Will was just sitting. 

“Alpha, Alpha please-” 

“Hey, I’m right here.”

He drops down to the ground again and allows Connor to get in his lap, because in all honesty, there’s no point in telling him no right now. At least it makes it easier to hold the ice packs to the bruises on Connor’s stomach, even if the temperature contrast to his fevered skin makes him tense up.

“Breathe, you’re okay. I’ve got you. When was the last time you had water?”

Instead of answering, Connor whines and tries to kiss Will, and he can’t deny him something so simple. He’s thought about this, he’ll admit. A real kiss. Connor’s lips are chapped, but he’s eager and just a little messy and he smells like desire. Not just the emptiness of unattached heat, like before, but true arousal and want, and Will has to believe that it means something. But he has to remember, this could still very much be the heat talking. And he can’t in good conscience take advantage of that.

“I’m gonna get you a drink, can you hold these?” Will tries to get Connor to hold the ice packs in place, but his hands are uncoordinated and weak and he doesn’t manage it. He looks up at Will with these sad eyes and there’s nothing in that moment he wouldn’t do for him. “Okay. I’ll be right back, don’t move.”

It wasn’t a command, but Connor goes still and he looks so trusting. Will could never do anything to jeopardize his trust in him, never would. He just smiles and goes to get water, and whatever else he can think of so he doesn’t have to abandon Connor again. A cup. A box of protein bars he finds in the cabinet. A pitcher of orange juice. Both of the plastic water bottles on the top shelf of the fridge. He carries it all and sets it on the floor, just far enough away that it won’t get knocked over before getting one of the water bottles to Connor’s lips.

“There you go,” he praises. It’s instinct to make sure Connor knows he’s good. “Breathe. I’ve got you. Can you drink it on your own?”

The answer is no, but that’s okay. Will helps him finish the bottle, then goes back to holding the ice packs to the bruises. That’s probably an overreaction, but he would feel better getting them examined for damage, and that’s not happening any time soon with Connor just starting his heat. He can’t get over how much Connor trusts him, to have called him for help and then allowed him to care for him.

One of Connor’s hands raises to brush against Will’s neck, like he’s trying to mark him back. He’s so fucking cute right now. His blue eyes are too easy to get lost in, as enrapturing as his scent that Will is sure he’ll never be able to scrub out of his skin after this. He gets so distracted that he loses track of his hands until Connor yelps and jerks away from him. For a moment, Will’s terrified of what he might’ve done, but he looks down and realizes he was just pressing a little more firmly into Connor’s stomach. He lifts the ice packs and sucks in a breath. The bruises are bigger.

“Okay, you need to tell me what happened.”

Connor shakes his head. “Can’t.”

“Yes you can, Omega. Please, tell me what happened.”

Calling him Omega relaxes him at the very least, but he still won’t tell Will what caused this, which gives him the sneaking suspicion that it was Ava. The memory of Connor’s scent all over her comes back. She could’ve forced him into an early heat, hurt him. If he was already stressed from her actions, at risk from five years of suppressants, this could be really bad. The doctor in his mind wants to take Connor in for a real examination, make sure he’s not in danger right now. But the Alpha doesn’t want anyone else to see or smell Connor like this, and wants to protect the fragile Omega who can barely speak right now. 

“Let me take a look then, okay? Can I touch you?”

He nods immediately, grabs for Will’s hands to put them where he wants and pouting when Will doesn’t let him. As carefully as he can, he feels for swelling and tenderness on Connor’s abdomen, just to reassure himself until he figures out a plan. It just seems like bruising, but he’s still nervous. He wants to make sure Connor is okay. But he has to realize, he has an obligation as Connor’s friend, as an Alpha, to make him as happy and calm right now as possible.

The best he can do is replace the ice packs and kiss Connor’s throat again to try and keep him calm.


	9. Chapter 9

When Connor doesn’t show up for work the next day, Ava knows without a doubt that he’s in heat, and he needs her. He can’t go through this without an Alpha. She’s vibrating out her skin all day, thinking of how good he smelled, how much she’d love to bathe in his scent. Ava even stops at the store before she goes over to get things she knows Omegas want and/or need in heat. A soft blanket, some enhanced water because they need the electrolytes, a stuffed animal for him to hold when she needs a break. Everything else is just instinct.

On the train ride to his apartment, she marks up the stuffed animal so it smells like her. It’s soft, really, a little bear with pink fur from the children’s department, with little strawberries on the pads of its paws. She doesn’t know that Connor will necessarily like it, but she likes it, and it’ll help with all of this. An old Alpha woman smiles at her on the seat across.

“Courting?” she asks.

“For a couple days. It’s soon, but he needs me right now.”

Ava kisses the top of the bear’s head and hides her face in it for the rest of the journey, thinking about Connor She wants to bond him, and this could be her chance. He’d be hers. Really hers. She wants that so badly. Thinking about it must be enough to change her scent because she sees an Omega down a few seats bare their throat to her. If only it was that easy with Connor. But there’s a charm, something precious about the way she has to take care of him and train him herself. 

She feels lighter than she has in a long time when she approaches his door. She doesn’t have a key, and it’s locked, so she has no choice but to knock on the door. From out here, she can smell his heat, his desperation. He needs her. 

“C’mon, Connor, open the door,” she calls through the wood. “Open it for me, Omega.”

But when the door swings open, it’s Halstead. Standing there, with his arms crossed and his cheeks flushed, smelling like Connor’s arousal and need. Ava shoves him back, although maybe that’s the worst thing to do because it gets him closer to Connor, and Connor is her Omega. Hers. Halstead has no fucking right to be here. 

“Bekker-”

She wants to rip out his throat, bash his head against Connor’s marble counters, break every bone in his body, do whatever the hell it takes to get him to stay away from what’s hers. She manages to get him pinned against one of the counters. This piece of shit. He needs to stay away from what’s hers.

“That is my fucking Omega. You need to stay away from him,” she growls.

Halstead has the audacity to laugh at her. “He’s not yours! Christ, when are you going to realize that? Connor’s terrified of you!”

“It’s not my fault no one trained him right. But he’s mine, so you need to get out right fucking now.”

He grabs her arms and tries to turn things around, pin her, but she’s stronger than he is. She’s the fucking Alpha. She’s the better Alpha, the stronger Alpha, the one who deserves Connor, and Halstead is not worthy of such a fertile and sweet smelling and naturally submissive Omega because he wouldn’t know the first thing about taking care of Connor. Connor needs her. Her. Not Halstead.

“Bekker. Ava. Calm down-”

“Stay away from him!”

The command rolls through Halstead’s body, makes his shoulders tighten because he won’t just listen to her and do what she said. He’s visibly fighting not to get away like he should. Ava bares her teeth at him and growls, low in her throat.

“Stay away from my Omega!”

“He’s not yours!”

Halstead is the one who snaps before she can. He lunges forward and bites, digging his teeth into the side of her neck, and she pulls away before she could, and damn it hurts like a bitch. But that doesn’t matter, because Connor is hers. She growls at him and makes a dash to where she remembers Connor’s nest being. His scent is strongest over here, and she ignores the blood dripping on her shoulder because, in just a moment, she’s with him. He’s laying there, spread out on his bedroom floor, with his legs spread. 

The second he catches her scent, he curls up and looks at her with wide eyes. “Alpha…”

“I’m here,” she says, dropping to her knees beside him and reaching for him, but he leans away from her, like he’s shy. Soft and small. She just wants him to be hers. “Everything’s alright, Omega, I’m here.”

He shakes his head, but she’s irritated because of Halstead, and she can smell him on Connor, and she follows her instincts because it feels like she’s spent a lifetime chasing him. In a way, she has. She’s been searching for a mate who’s enough for her, who isn’t stupid, who she knows will have her kits and be good to her, and now that she’s realized Connor is perfect, she can’t let go of that. She just can’t. 

She grabs his waist and buries her face in his neck. She needs to mark him, and the blood from Halstead’s bite only helps make Connor smell like her, smell owned. He’s hers. Hers, and he’s crying, and she just wants him to shut up and be the good Omega she knows is inside him. 

Halstead comes in, and the fresh wave of his scent just makes everything worse and she’s still trying to groom his scent out of Connor’s skin. “You need to get off of him, or I’m calling the police.”

“He’s mine.”

“No, Bekker, he isn’t. Get off.”

She’s not going to let go of him. He’s hers. Her mate. Her Omega. She deserves him. She keeps kissing, keeps grooming, because Connor is hers, and he smells so nice, and she’s got him pinned so he isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Hers. Hers. Her Connor. He smells perfect, and she just wants him, she wants everything about him. 

Ava wraps her arms around him and pulls him up, carries him to the closet where he keeps his nest because it won’t smell like Halstead. Halstead, who’s screaming at her to leave Connor alone. He has no right to demand that, just as Connor has no right to be pushing at her shoulders weakly as she locks the closet door. “Stop it!”

He whines, but doesn’t keep resisting her, which is something. She pushes him down against the blankets of his nest, and it’s just the two of them here as she presses her hands into his hips. But he cries out and when she looks down there are dark, huge bruises. Fuck. Halstead. 

“No, no, it’s okay,” she says, trying to reach for his face and calm him down. “You’re okay, breathe. My good Omega, shh. I’ve got you, Connor.”

He shakes his head desperately, and he’s breathing shallowly and she leans over him to go back to grooming, and for the first time, crooning. She hasn’t done this since she was in med school, crooning to calm an Omega down. It feels like a defeat, but it works, and she wishes she could give him the blanket and stuffed animal she got him, but that would mean abandoning this nest and facing Halstead all over again. The blood smeared on Connor’s throat reminds her of Halstead’s false claim. 

“My Omega,” she sighs, as he relaxes beneath her and goes limp, pliant. Like he should be for his Alpha. That’s all she’s wanted this entire time. Her good Omega. “Beautiful, see? Good Omega.”

Connor bares his throat, and finally. Finally, she can claim him. 


	10. Chapter 10

Jay promised there’s help on the way, but it’s not calming Will down. He can still taste Bekker’s blood in his mouth, and hear Ava talking to Connor like a baby and it’s driving Will crazy because this isn’t safe, and he would break the door down if he wasn’t terrified of it hurting Connor more. He needs help now, someone to get Connor away from Bekker and safe, and maybe help him get Connor to a hospital. There are too many things going through his mind right now, but what stings is the failure. He couldn’t protect him. Will’s a shit Alpha.

He wonders if, under different circumstances, they could’ve properly courted. Because even if Will had wanted him, if Connor wanted that too, it’s not possible now because of what’s happened. A trauma like this doesn’t heal overnight, and there’s no doubt he’s going to remind Connor of this every time they interact. 

Connor yelps, and it takes every ounce of self control not to break down the closet door. Connor has the money to replace it, or at least get it fixed, anyways.

“Bekker, open the fucking door. The cops are on the way, you really don’t wanna be in there when they get here, I swear!”

Will presses his hands flat against the wood, his face too, and he can smell Connor’s distress and Bekker’s attempts to croon him- something that doesn’t seem to be working too much. But then he smells the difference, and his chest hurts. The moment she does something that can’t be undone. The moment their scents aren’t just mixed, but intertwined, together. And it’s over. She has legal rights over Connor now. She can do almost anything she wants to him, and the law protects her but not him, and it’s not fair.

“No, no, no!”

He slaps the door in rhythm with each word, but it doesn’t matter anymore. As quickly as he had moments with Connor, as soft and together they had been only ten minutes ago, it’s over now, and in all likelihood, he’ll never see Connor again after today. Bekker will absolutely pull him out of med. She might transfer hospitals, maybe even cities, because that would isolate Connor more and make him easy to control, and Christ. It’s over.

“Fuck. I- Connor, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

That’s, of course, the moment the police let themselves in, and all they see is Will, blood on his teeth and mouth, standing outside a locked closet door that clearly contains mates inside. It looks like he’s the bad guy here, but he’s not. He raises his hands in surrender and backs away. 

“I’m the one who called- she just forcibly mated him in there, I know he doesn’t want it. I would’ve broke down the door, but I don’t wanna hurt him.”

One of the officers gestures for him to turn around, and it hurts as his arms are yanked behind his back and silver slapped onto his wrists. He’s never liked police, but it felt like the only option he had. But at least there’s a chance that Connor can tell his side of the story, even if it’s too late now. The officer sits him on the edge of Connor’s bed, and he just watches as the officer politely asks Bekker to unlock the door, and she does. She actually does it. She opens the closet door with the bite on her neck still dripping all over her, but there’s more blood than before. It’s in her mouth, and when she pulls Connor out, he’s dazed with a clear, barely bleeding, bite mark right at the crook of his neck. 

Bekker talks to the officers calm and easy, like she’s done nothing wrong, but Will doesn’t register any of the actual words. He’s just looking at Connor, the way his whole body curls in on itself and shivers because he’s still in heat, still scared, and his head must be fuzzy from the rush of endorphins being bonded gave his body.

But thankfully, one of the officers notices the bruises on Connor’s stomach, and they’re calling an ambulance for him like Will should’ve done in the first place, before anyone even looks at him again and by then, he’s given up. All Connor has done is nod, shake his head, or look to Bekker. He seems so broken.

“You’re lucky,” one of the officers says, finally getting around to uncuffing Will. “They’ve decided not to press charges so long as you move along.”

“Yeah,” Will says, and chances one last look at Connor. Small. Terrified. He wants to apologize, but he’d rather not make things any worse. He inhales one more time, just for the slightest hint of the heat beneath the distress and new mate bond and blood. “Goodbye, Connor.”

He walks out of that apartment thinking about Connor’s bruises, and about how dangerous Bekker is, and about how he’s out of options. He can’t save him. And maybe Connor doesn’t want him to, because he allowed Bekker to mate him, didn’t he? It wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t want it.

Will winds up at home, and it’s so obvious in retrospect how much he wanted Connor. He has a blanket on his couch, a soft one he normally wouldn’t care for, but Connor would love. There are groceries in his house beyond microwave meals and chips for the first time in months. He’s cleaned the space. Just a day or so ago, he bought himself a new soap with a softer scent. All those behaviors that are textbook “nesting” for Alphas. Not making a literal nest like Omegas do, especially when they’re being courted, but preparing for a mate. To provide.

“Fuck!”

Maybe he should’ve done what Connor wanted when Will first got there. Knotted him and mated him so Bekker couldn’t. At least then, Connor would be safe. He hates himself. By ignoring his instincts, he’s caused pain. And he won’t be the doctor to find out if Connor’s badly hurt by the way Bekker hurt him. Those bruises stay behind his eyes, and so does the ring of red irritation and blood that means it’s over. It’s over.

He didn’t mean to get so attached. And clearly, Connor didn’t want him in the first place. But hey, the one good thing about the way Will was apparently nesting is that he has ice cream in his freezer, the expensive vanilla bean one by that cheese brand because it’s Connor’s favorite, and Will isn’t sure why he bought it anyways.

Yes he is.

He doesn’t even try to eat it, just goes to bed and buries himself in the soft sheets in hopes of something turning out alright. It occurs to him suddenly that he wanted it to smell like Connor, and it hurts that it doesn’t. He’s done nothing for the past twelve hours but practically roll in Connor’s scent, and he misses it.

Of course, he doesn’t get much sleep, and winds up going to work on very little, on nothing but an energy drink he picks up from a gas station, choosing the one that of course has always reminded of Connor’s scent. Orange Monster. And it’s bullshit. But he drinks it anyways to get through his shift, and of course the first thing he sees when he walks into the ER is Connor, sitting on the edge of a bed in one of those hospital gowns, shivering, Bekker rubbing his back like she deserves it. The heat on him is still all over the ED, even with a janitor continuously mopping and cleaning and the air freshener at the nurse’s station trying to keep a frenzy from happening. Will stops in the entrance, just watches, and he knows Connor smells him, because his head snaps up and they make eye contact, for just a moment. It seems for all the world like he’s trying to tell him something, but it doesn’t make it across the space between them before Bekker finishes signing a clipboard April holds out to her, and then she’s taking Connor to, presumably, her home.

This is the last Will is ever going to see of him.


	11. Chapter 11

The ED only confirms what Ava knew from the second she saw the bruises- superficial injury, just bruises, nothing dangerous. He’ll be fine. Just take it easy, even though it’s his first heat being bonded, and try not to do too much so he doesn’t make things worse. The whole time in the ED though, he’s quiet, just like he was after she mated him and the police called an ambulance. She likes that he’s not arguing with her, but there’s something wrong about this. He’s lifeless. And that’s not what she wanted, she thinks as she ubers the two of them back to her apartment. Later, she’ll get essentials from his, but anything he needs could just be bought again. She makes a decent salary, and now she has access to Connor’s entire trust fund, so she’ll pull from that for his expenses. No problem. She can take care of him the way she’s always wanted. 

When they get home, Ava leads Connor to bed, and he lets her. Doesn’t make a joke or anything, doesn’t try to fight back, just goes. There’s something in his eyes, though. Something still sharp and firm, beneath this temporary compliance. And she knows it’s temporary, because she knows Connor. At some point, he’s going to argue with her again, refuse to submit, but the difference is that he’s hers now, and there’s nothing he can do about it. The bite mark on his neck cements it. He hasn’t claimed her back yet, but things have been hectic. They can get to that today, as she cares for him during his heat.

“I put in your resignation while we were there,” she says, settling on top of him and watching his chest heave. “So you don’t have to worry about it.”

She leans down to groom the scent of the hospital off him, but he won’t bare his neck. He just stares at her, and his scent, beneath disinfectant and hers, is irritated, There’s going to be an adjustment period, she knows that, but it doesn’t mean that he gets to ignore his place, especially when she knows he’s in heat right now. It’s simmering beneath his skin. This is one of those moments that he should want to give up control for his Alpha, not resist her.

Ava growls and grabs his chin, forces him to tilt his head back so she can groom him, even though it’s clear he’s resisting. It’s stupid and pointless. She’s his Alpha, and if she decides to groom him, he doesn’t have the authority to do anything about it. With his throat bared for her, she’s able to groom him, nip at his jaw, lose herself in his scent the way he should lose himself in hers. But he’s just laying there and looking at her, even as his body and scent are starting to go haywire in need of an Alpha to help him through his heat.

“Connor, relax.”

He obeys physically, but his face remains the same. Upset. Angry. She doesn’t get it. He’s hers now, he should be relaxing into his role, but he won’t. He just looks at her like he doesn’t want to be here, and he shouldn’t be resisting his instincts. With Halstead gone, everything should be fine now, but it’s not, because Connor won’t stop acting like this even though she’s claimed him and gotten him alone. He was so submissive for her last night, was a good Omega in the ED, but now he’s being too confrontational and strong willed again, and it’s ruining everything.

She grabs his hips and presses down again, to remind him where he is and what his job is. He’s an Omega. Her Omega. And he’s in heat. He should be begging her to take care of him, not refusing to submit like they’re back at the beginning of this. In three days, she thought she broke him, but apparently not. She has the time, though. He can’t go anywhere without her now. She owns him. He needs to get over himself and realize that there’s no point playing coy anymore. 

“It’s okay, Omega,” she says, as gently as she can manage. “You can submit. You’ve got nothing to prove.”

He has the audacity to growl at her- or at least the closest approximation he can manage, because he’s a fucking Omega and not an Alpha, and he needs to act like it. Ava bites him again, not as deep as when she claimed him, but enough for it to hurt and bleed some and get him to go limp and give her such wide, frightened eyes. Back to the way he was last night. The way he should be.

“Good,” she coos, and runs her hands over Connor’s body. Lithe and well kept. Strong. She could fill him with kits right now. Breed him. “Just relax, Omega.”

But then her phone goes off, and she forgot she was on call. She picks it up, reads the message, and knows they’ll call, next. Jesus. Ava sits up properly and taps out a response.

“I’ll be back in a bit. Could be six hours, could be twelve. Be good, and if you need me, I’ve got my phone or you know the hospital number. Anything in the house, you can have.” She cups his face and he turns away. “Be good, be safe, Omega.”

He doesn’t answer her.

It still stands though, that Connor can’t leave, and nothing too bad can happen while she’s at work. It’s that thought she clings to as she pulls on a clean pair of scrubs, as she keeps smelling the air for his delicious scent, as she ties her shoes and wonders if she should bring him home another soft blanket after her shift. He’d like that, she thinks.

For her entire shift, she’s thinking about him, about coming home to her Omega because she finally has one, even if he’s still somewhat a work in progress. Everyone at the hospital can smell him on her, and she knows they know. He’s hers. Latham nods at her, says to extend his best wishes to Connor. Most of the nurses congratulate her, tell her they were wondering if Connor would ever be able to set down. And she’s proud of that, knowing that she’s done something no one else could, and that she’s able to take care of him the way he deserves.

On the way back to her apartment, she even goes by the store again. Another soft blanket for Connor, something quick he can eat, and a thing of ice cream she can imagine he’d like. Strawberry, with little frozen chunks inside. It seems like the sort of thing he’d enjoy. She can’t stop smiling because hey, maybe the day allowed him to calm down, and she can breed him, let him claim her back, cement that he’s safe to follow his instincts here.

“I’m back,” she calls through the doorway, but something’s wrong.

For one, the bleach is sitting on the counter, open, its scent mingling with Connor’s. His scent that’s stale. Hours old. Not fresh anymore. 

“Connor? Omega? This isn’t funny.”

She goes to her room first, and it’s clear he hasn’t been there in hours either. Or in the bathroom. Or in the closet. Or anywhere in the apartment. He’s gone, even though he belongs to her, and she sees red. Well. She sees a red overlay on an image of Connor tied to the bed so he can’t run away from her again, so he can learn how to be a good Omega. 

Ava reaches for her phone and presses the three numbers that will give her an opportunity to find Connor again. She has the right to him. She owns him. He’s hers. And wherever he went, he can’t stay there forever, because he has to come back. And as she explains the situation to dispatch, she thinks she knows exactly where Connor went.


	12. Chapter 12

Only three hours into Will’s shift, he’s sent home. Everyone can smell how upset he is, how disappointed and angry and guilty, and it’s not good for the patients it’s his job to take care of. He can’t do that, smelling like he does, so Goodwin tells him to take the day to calm himself down, get back control. She’s right, and he hates that she’s right. On the train, no one will come within five feet of him because he fucking reeks. He needs a good shower with strip soap, and a stiff drink, and maybe to go out to some bar and find a different Omega to bury his face in so he can get away from Connor’s memory. 

He locks himself in his apartment and snatches up the blanket he bought to bury his face in. At some point, he’s gotta find a real mate to settle down with. Someone like Connor, he thinks, with a mind of their own and a beautiful smile and such a talent for helping other people. He wants Connor, but he missed his shot. If he concentrates hard, he can still remember the way Connor smelled, the way his heat smelled.

For some reason, his nose is hit with the stinging odor of bleach, and he isn’t sure why. He doesn’t own any, and the building policy is to post a notice before using strong smelling chemicals, so it can’t be one of the neighbors. Before he can start to investigate, something bangs against his door, fast and frantic. Will grabs his bat before opening it, only to see Connor there, cheeks flushed, the skin on his neck and wrists irritated, raw- chemical burns. Undiluted bleach that he reeks of, covering his natural scent.

“Help me, please. I have to hide…”

Will has an obligation to call the cops, to bring Connor back to Bekker, but he’s not going to. He wouldn’t dare. He glances around the hallway and, once he sees it’s clear, pulls Connor inside. His scent is so absent, covered by the bleach- it was smart, almost. Now he can’t be tracked. But he has chemical burns. At least he doesn’t have internal injuries, according to the hospital records Will couldn’t resist looking at just to be sure that Connor was okay.

“You could’ve hurt yourself, doing this.”

Connor shakes his head. To say that he’s fine, or that it doesn’t matter, Will can’t tell. The only thing he brought with him is a small bag that feels like it’s full of fabric- clothes. Not Connor’s, because they weren’t staying there, so they must be Bekker’s. It makes sense, he supposes. Connor has a mate whether he likes it or not, and he’ll need her scent for his own health until he can get the bond severed. If he ever can. There are experimental procedures, but they don’t always succeed in separating mates.

Will’s getting ahead of himself. “I’ll put this in my closet, and then we’ll talk, okay?” he asks, taking the bag off Connor’s shoulder. “You can’t stay forever. Everyone at the hospital, they’ll be able to smell you on me once that bleach starts to fade. Especially because I know you’re still in heat, Connor, even if I can’t smell it.”

“No, I uh- I…” he waves a hand near his neck, and all Will smells is the bleach, none of Connor’s incredible usual scent. “I kept pouring it, over and over. They’re uh, I made sure they can’t work anymore.”

He tilts his head to the side, revealing the burn on his bite mark too. Jesus. “Connor, if- I need to take you to the hospital. If they really can’t, then there’s a lot of damage, and you need antibiotics, you need to be looked at, evaluated-”

“No hospital, they’ll send me back. Just- can’t you help me?”

Anything Connor will ask like that, looking at Will with those big blue eyes, he’ll give to him. He can’t stop himself. “Okay, okay. I’ve got gauze, I’ll put bandages on you, then we’ll talk. C’mon, the bathroom’s this way.”

It’s strange, driving Will insane to not be able to smell Connor anymore. He’s used to being able to practically taste him, but the chemicals instead of the sweetness when he knows Connor is right here is short-circuiting his brain. He has to squeeze his eyes shut and take a deep breath that just smells like bleach.

“There were better ways-”

“No.” Connor grabs Will’s arm tightly, digs his fingers in. “Not from her. I did what I had to, and- and I know you’ll help me. You helped me before.”

“You realize this is the first place she’ll look.”

“It doesn’t matter-”

Although it seems like Connor had more to say, his words evaporate into a shiver and his brows draw together. Without the scent, it’s easy to forget. Connor’s still in the middle of heat, and he’s here, running away from his Alpha. He’s hurting right now, needs to be taken care of.

“I’ll patch you up, and you can nest in my closet, for now. We’ll figure this out, okay?”

He helps Connor hop up on the counter and digs out his first aid supplies from under the counter. Mostly it’s off brand band-aids, but he has a roll of gauze and a few cotton pads. He’s as careful as he can manage, pressing a pad to each of Connor’s burned scent glands and winding the gauze around his neck. Other than the burns, his skin is smooth and soft. Will wants to kiss him. Groom him. But he can’t do either of those things, he reminds himself as he puts a knee-sized bandaid over the burned bite mark on the crook of his neck. Then he moves on to the wrists, noting the little purple marks that are probably from Bekker. Will doesn’t stay there long, just wraps up the best he can and steps back.

“Anywhere else?”

“I can take care of it myself-”

“Connor.”

Connor takes a deep breath and spreads his legs, lifts the edge of the hospital gown he’s still wearing so Will can see that he burned the scent glands on his inner thighs. He could tell Connor to handle this himself, but that’s not the sort of Alpha Will is, and when he kneels between Connor’s legs, he can just barely smell the heat on him again, can definitely smell the slick. Not for the first time, he’s caught in a moment of wanting to do more than just help. He wants to touch, to claim.

“Okay. Just lift your leg up a little, I’ll do your left first.”

Will carefully places the pad in place and begins to wrap the gauze, careful not to let his hand brush anything it shouldn’t. Connor deserves better than that. He’s cautious and methodical until it’s time to switch to the other side. As soon as he lets go of one leg, however, it curls around his waist and Connor’s foot digs into the small of his back. He doesn’t say anything, just focuses on the other, but when he’s done, the other joins and he finds himself pulled flush to the counter with Connor’s legs around him and then his arms around Will’s neck, and there’s no space between them. Will’s struggling to smell more than the bleach, and he just barely catches the hint of the slick, maybe because he knows it’s there now, or maybe because his hand brushed against some when he was bandaging Connor’s second leg.

“Connor…”

“Alpha,” Connor answers, tilting his head just slightly to the side. Not submissive, but curious. Teasing. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

He has. Will’s thought about it, thought about giving in to what comes naturally and making Connor feel good, giving him anything he could want. Taking care of him like a real Alpha should. Kissing his lips until they’re swollen, and rubbing his scent on every inch of Connor’s body, and letting a hand come up between them to touch Connor and see if his pleased moans are as high pitched as his frightened whimpers.

But right now’s a bad time. Will needs to be rational, for both of them, even though Connor’s lips start to skim his cheek. He leans away, pushes Connor’s legs down, off of his hips. 

“Connor, right now…”

“Please?”

Connor’s hands cup Will’s face, one of his thumbs stroking along his bottom lip, and his eyes seem so big and sad and empty, and Will wants to just fill him with as much love as he can hold, but it isn’t that simple. Even if Connor wants him, and there’s enough slick on the counter for Will to coat his whole body in, Connor legally and physically belongs to someone else, and he’s in no position right now to be making any decisions like that. It would be easier to do as Connor says, but no. Will can’t. Even with the hands on his cheeks, the soft lips pouting at him. He wants. But he can’t have.

“I’m sorry. Now c’mon, let’s set up your nest and come up with a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @beelivia


End file.
